


Haunting Memories

by EleenaDume



Series: Spop fics! [9]
Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Lesbian Relationship, Comfort/Angst, Cross-Posted on Tumblr, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Heavy Angst, Honesty why am I writing angst with these two, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Canon, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, You Have Been Warned, beware of the angst, but here I am writing more for some reason, i love these two so much, the entire show is already one big catradora angst fic, this fic also has lots of hugs and cuddling, this fic has way too much angst I’m sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-19
Updated: 2020-06-19
Packaged: 2021-03-03 21:33:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24812368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EleenaDume/pseuds/EleenaDume
Summary: Takes place some time after “Heart Part 2”.Catra is woken up in the middle of the night by Adora holding onto her a little too tightly, and quickly realizes that her girlfriend is plagued by nightmares. But Adora isn’t the only one haunted by memories...Maybe Catra and Adora will spend the rest of their lives comforting each other. And maybe that’s okay.TW: PTSD and mentions of self-harm.
Relationships: Adora & Catra (She-Ra), Adora/Catra (She-Ra)
Series: Spop fics! [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1791085
Comments: 5
Kudos: 198





	Haunting Memories

Catra loved sleeping in Adora’s arms.

Or, well, at least most of the time she did.

At the moment... she didn’t like it quite as much as usual.

The young woman groaned and tried to wiggle out of her girlfriend’s grip. The attempt was unsuccessful.

“Adora, it’s, like, three in the morning, would you mind not crushing me to death? I love you, but this is making it kind of hard to breathe and I like my ribs intact...”

But Adora just squeezed her even more, her whole body tensing.

“S...stay with me, okay?” Adora whispered in her ear.

“Of course I’m staying with you, dummy. And even if I didn’t want to, I don’t exactly have a choice with you basically holding me prisoner in your arms, do I?” Catra replied sarcastically.

She was never, ever losing Adora again. She wasn’t going to leave her. Not now, not ever. And she wouldn’t make the same mistake of staying behind a second time if her girlfriend was the one to leave again. From now on, she would go with her wherever Adora went. She was the love of her life, and while a part of Catra still thought she didn’t deserve her – not anymore, not after everything she did... she was going to cherish every second she had with her. She would work to be better from now on, day after day. But her offer still stood. If Adora ever asked her to leave, she would.

Other than that, the blonde would have a hard time trying to get rid of her, bone-crushing squeezing in the middle of the night or not.

“We’re going home,” Adora whispered, her voice so soft and desperate and broken that it immediately tore Catra from her thoughts.”I... I promised I would take you home. Come on. Wake up.”

Then it clicked. Adora wasn’t awake. She was still sleeping, probably having a bad dream. She was just talking in her sleep.

“Hey...” Catra put her hand on one her girlfriend’s hands that was placed on her belly. “It’s okay. You’re just dreaming.”

But she wasn’t getting through to her.

“You can’t die on me now. Catra, please wake up...”

She was full-on shaking now, sobbing her heart out.

Catra gulped. So that was why she was being squeezed so much.

“...oh no.” 

This wasn’t the first time her girlfriend had that particular nightmare... but Catra had hoped it would at least happen less frequently now that Prime was gone. That they could sleep in peace for the first couple of nights after everything was finally over. That they could just... be happy for once.

But even though he was gone, Prime was still ruining their lives.

What the fuck was wrong with the universe?! 

Stars, Adora had always, always, always put everyone else’s happiness over her own. She’d spent the last couple of years trying to save the world and had been willing to die in the process. But she didn’t. She was alive, and she’d saved the universe, and somehow, she was still not allowed to be happy.

Why was the world so cruel to her? If anyone deserved to suffer after everything that happened, after everything she did, it was Catra. But somehow, the universe had decided that Adora had to be punished with trauma as a reward for everything she sacrificed.

This was so unfair.

Catra would have given anything,  _ everything _ , to suffer through Adora’s nightmares for her so her girlfriend could be happy.

But it didn’t work like that.

Her heart ached at every single one of Adora’s sobs.

“I’m here! I’m okay!” Catra exclaimed, louder this time, hoping that this might be enough to wake up her girlfriend. 

But it wasn’t. 

“COME ON, CATRA! WAKE UP! You can’t...” Adora’s voice cracked. “You... you can’t just leave me like that. It can’t end like this. Not after everything we’ve been through. Wake up. Wake up...”

The sheer amount of desperation in her voice was absolutely unbearable.

Dream-Catra wasn’t waking up ever again, no matter how much Adora begged... and real Catra was still stuck in her girlfriend’s tense grip and would have been okay with some broken ribs at this point if it made Adora feel better.

That pain couldn’t be any worse than the Catra she was in hearing her girlfriend beg and sob like this.

“You just have to open your eyes, please... I... I can’t take it. I don’t want you to cry.”

It couldn’t go on like this. 

Catra had to find a way to stop this and wake her girlfriend up.

She couldn’t jolt her awake while she was stuck in her arms like this. And just yelling at her didn’t work, either.

For a second, Catra glanced down at her retracted claws – then mentally slapped herself for even considering that for as much as a moment. Even if scratching her probably would have worked... she had vowed to never hurt Adora again, and she wasn’t about to break that promise – not now, not ever. Hurting her was not an option ever again.

She should never have done it to begin with.

But... that hit on another idea.

It was stupid. Incredibly, incredibly stupid. It wasn’t really as much a conscious decision as it was desperation and reflex. The thought of it maybe working and waking Adora up from the dream she was having was enough to make Catra sink her claws into her own wrist.

She screamed in pain.

That snapped her girlfriend out of her nightmare, alright. She let go of Catra’s body, sat up and threw her arms up into the air in a sudden movement, still half asleep and definitely far, far away from the bedroom.

“For the honor of-“

_‘Oh no.’_

“Adora!” Catra grabbed the young woman’s hand that was reaching out for the sword and threw herself onto her girlfriend, pinning her to the bed before she could finish that sentence. The absolute last thing they needed right now was someone accidentally getting stabbed. “Adora, it’s okay. It’s okay. I’m here. See? I’m okay. I’m okay...”

She held her girlfriend in her arms, despite one of them really, really hurting, rubbing her back slightly.

Adora gasped. The glimpse of the sword that had started to form disappeared back into thin air.

“C-Catra?”

“Shhh. It’s okay. It’s okay. I’m right here.”

Adora melted into her arms, sobbing. She needed to feel Catra – all of her – to make sure she was actually still here, still breathing,  _ still with her _ _._ She felt Catra’s chest rise and fall with each of her breaths. It was calming. 

She smelled pretty nice, too. Glimmer had probably given her one of the what Adora guessed was probably about twenty thousand bottles of weirdly good smelling shampoos they were storing in the palace.

All of this combined was slowly calming her down, but she still couldn’t stop crying.

“I- I had another nightmare. You... died again.”

Losing Catra was the most terrifying thing she could think of. Losing her as a friend had been terrible and hurt beyond words, but the thought that she could have been gone forever...

“Yeah, I thought it was something like that.” Catra kissed her forehead and desperately tried to ignore the burning pain in her left wrist. “I... know how it feels. There are a lot of things that happened in the last few months – heck, in the last few years –, that I will probably never get over. And you almost dying in my arms was... terrifying. Beyond terrifying.” She hated, hated,  _hated_ thinking about that,  _so much_. “But we’re both here now, okay? And nothing is going to separate us ever again.” ‘ _Not our fears, not our weaknesses, not our pasts, and definitely not destiny._ ’ “ I promise .”

“I love you. I love you so much.”

Catra smiled softly.

“I love you, too.”

  
  


For a while, they both just sat there, neither of them saying a single word. Adora still hadn’t stopped shaking entirely when they broke apart, but Catra happily purring against her chest was incredibly calming.

It wasn’t until they let go of each other that Catra realized that her blood was all over her arm, and all over Adora’s white shirt.

She gulped.

“T-that’s not good.”

Adora looked confused for a moment.

“What’s not-” Then her eyes caught the injury. All color drained from the blonde’s face. “Did- did I hurt you?“ She felt sick. “I- I’m so sorry... I didn’t mean to-”

Catra took her girlfriend’s hands in hers and shook her head vigorously. This wasn’t Adora’s fault, in the slightest, and the last thing the magicat wanted was for her girlfriend to go back to panicking. Catra hated seeing her upset.

“Adora, look at me.” The blonde complied, looking up at her girlfriend with tears in her eyes. “Calm down, okay? It’s alright. You didn’t hurt me. I just hurt myself.”

Adora’s eyes widened in shock as she pulled her girlfriend in for another tight hug.

“I’m so sorry, I should have been awake to help you, I-” 

She just held Catra close and sobbed into her shoulder.

_ ‘Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid. I should’ve known. I should have stayed awake with her and looked for warning signs more and-‘ _

It wasn’t like this was the first time this had happened. It had gotten less frequent over time, and Adora hoped that it would now be going away entirely now that Prime was really, actually gone forever... but Catra had sunk her claws into the back of her own neck time and again during the last couple of weeks, like she was still trying to remove the chip that was no longer there.

She also spent an insane amount of time showering. And Catra  hated  showering.  _Stars, Catra didn’t even like **water**. _

Back at the Horde, she’d always been the first one done with showering because she hated the water so much.

Sure, in retrospect, the freezing cold showers at the Horde could basically be considered torture... but she had never hated them quite as much as Catra had.

And recent events had more than proved that the girl’s hate for water hadn’t subsided since then.

...yet, Catra kept taking long showers again and again, like she was trying to wash something away that wasn’t there anymore and yet could never be removed entirely. Maybe the mind control and the green fluid that she had been all but drowned in. Maybe the uncomfortable, gentle touches that made even Adora feel sick when she though about them, despite not having experiences many of them. Or maybe Catra was trying to wash away the memories.

Adora didn’t know, exactly. She just knew that something was haunting Catra the same way she herself was being haunted by that terrible, terrible memory that had been keeping her from so much as even a single night of actually sleeping soundly. 

The memory of Catra‘s lifeless body in her arms would haunt Adora for the rest of her life.

The memories kept coming back. At night, mostly, because when she was awake, she just needed to look at Catra to make sure she was actually still there and alive and breathing. 

She couldn’t do that in her dreams.

“No, Adora, I...” Catra started in an attempt to calm her girlfriend down again, but cut herself off in mid-sentence. 

She should have known that was the conclusion her girlfriend would come to – which, really, she couldn’t exactly blame her for –, and it was not calming Adora down in the slightest. 

Saying _‘_ _ I thought me screaming in pain would wake you up _ _’_ would sound incredibly stupid out loud – which really, it definitely had been, despite the fact that it worked... and telling Adora that was probably just going to make her feel even more guilty instead of better, and Catra didn’t want that. So instead, she just hugged Adora tighter and apologized.

“You’re right. I’m sorry, I-“ 

“Don’t apologize for struggling! You... you’ve been through so much, and now you’re working so hard to be better and...“ Adora kissed her forehead. “Some things will never be okay, but you’re working on yourself, and that’s what counts. I’m so proud of you, Catra.”

Now the brunette was also sobbing. She had needed to hear this, so, so much.

“Don’t do that,“ Catra murmured, burying her face in Adora’s chest.

“What?”

“Comfort me when I’m trying to comfort you.“

Stars, why did she suck at this so much? She had wanted to make Adora feel better, not break down sobbing on her shoulder because of everything that had happened. And now she wanted to apologize again, but she had a feeling that wouldn’t help much either.

But her comment had at least made Adora chuckle a little.

“Sorry, Kitty, but you’re stuck with me now, and I’m going to comfort you as much as I want, whenever I want, for the rest of my life,” Adora mumbled and rubbed her girlfriend’s back.

“I told you not to call me that...” Catra said, the words still ringing in her ears. ‘ _ For the rest of my life _ ’. Adora had said it in such a soft voice, with such caring certainty... Catra’s heart melted into a puddle. “I love you. I love you so much.”

“I love you, too.” Adora’s grip on her lessened a little, then a lot when she let go of her back to cup her head with her hands. “Can I kiss you?”

She didn’t get an answer before her girlfriend had wrapped her arms around her neck and their lips met.

Catra finally relaxed a little, and so did Adora. 

Kissing was nice. Really, really nice. Even when Adora tasted like that awful mint toothpaste she always used.

At that moment, they both silently decided that it was late, and they would discuss everything else in the morning. They’d cried more than enough for one night, and neither of them wanted to spend another minute thinking about the other’s death.

But Adora wasn’t entirely wrong about her assumptions. Catra silently vowed to open up to her about everything soon... but this was not the time or place to talk about everything that had happened or everything Catra needed to work through. 

Not that one single night would have been enough for that. 

...honestly, she wasn’t even sure an entire lifetime was.

But she would try, and see how far she would get – for Adora and for herself. Who knew, maybe she would end up writing that letter that Perfuma had suggested, after all. Maybe she could show it to Adora when she was done. Maybe that would make it easier.

  
  


“We should bandage your wound,” Adora said after a moment of silence.

“It’s not even so bad anymore.” That wasn’t true. It still hurt a lot, but Catra didn’t want her girlfriend to worry, and really, she had no one but herself to blame. “I mean, your shirt soaked up most of the blood, and it’s stopped bleeding now,” she shrugged.

“That’s not a good thing!” Adora protested immediately.

“I’m sorry for ruining another one of your shirts by the way. Although, with this one, you really only have yourself to blame. 

You wouldn’t see the blood as much if you didn’t wear white all the time,” Catra joked.

Her girlfriend... wasn’t very amused.

“You bled all over my shirt! The thing we should be discussing is you bleeding, not the fact that you ruined my shirt!”

“...sorry.”

“See? It doesn’t even look that bad in the light.” The four scratches on her wrist were not quite as deep as Catra had expected them to be. They still hurt a lot. “You, on the other hand, look like you just murdered someone.”

Adora rolled her eyes.

“...very funny.” Luckily, the amount of blood on her shirt looked worse than it actually was because every single drop of blood was extremely visible on the lightish fabric. “Just give me your arm, so I can clean the wound, please.”

The two of them were sitting on one of the palace’s way too many couches. Adora had ‘borrowed’ a first-aid-box from the healers’ chambers.

“...alright. Fine. But please promise me you will change after you’re done. You shouldn’t wear that bloody shirt anymore.”

“Okay.”

She-Ra could have easily healed the wound, but Catra knew that was immensely exhausting for Adora, so she didn’t want her to use it unless she absolutely had to.

Adora carefully cleaned her girlfriend’s wound and bandaged it tenderly. Catra just sat there and watched her in awe, now a hundred percent convinced that Adora was still magic without She-Ra.

“There you go. All better.”

Adora kissed the wound, and then Catra’s pain was gone entirely, replaced by a warm, incredible feeling of ‘ _how in the world do I deserve to date this angel_ ’.

“You’re amazing, you know that, right? With or without She-Ra.”

Adora’s cheeks heated up.

“You’re so sweet.”

“No, I’m not.”

“Yes, you are.” The blonde elbowed Catra in the side and chuckled. “I’m going to make good on my promise and dispose of the evidence of my murder now. And then we can...” She tensed. “...go back to sleep.”

“Adora...” Catra placed her uninjured hand on her girlfriend’s shoulder. “I know you well enough to know that something’s going on and you’re not telling me the truth about it. And I think I have an idea what this is about.”

“I-I’m fine, really,” Adora stuttered, not even slightly convincing.

“Wow, your lying is somehow even worse than your cooking. That’s almost impressive,“ Catra replied sarcastically. “I just want you to be happy, alright? Please just tell me what’s going on.”

That was all it took for Adora to cave.

“...okay, so maybe I’m not fine. I... kind of don’t want to go back to sleep,” she admitted.

“Yeah, I thought it was something like that. And honestly, me neither.” The brunette gave her girlfriend a kiss on the cheek and put her arm around her shoulder. “Wanna raid the kitchen for cake and then stay awake and snuggle until dawn breaks?”

Adora beamed and squeezed her Catra’s hand. 

Her heart skipped a beat.

Stars, she loved her so much.

“Always.”

**Author's Note:**

> Another Tumblr-request based on the prompt “I had another nightmare. You died again”. This one was requested by @catracorner962 and @brenda4082!
> 
> Thank you so much for reading, I hope you enjoyed it!  
> Feedback would be much appreciated!


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